


Naming

by BrighteyedJill



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Jossed, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-25
Updated: 2007-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 16:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrighteyedJill/pseuds/BrighteyedJill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter has a lot of time to think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Naming

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble inspired by last night's squee-worthy premiere. A little different than my usual stuff. Edit: Now thoroughlly Joss'd, but this was my knee-jerk take on seeing chainedup!Peter in "Four Months Later."

They keep me in the dark, more often then not. There’s nothing to see in any of the places I’ve been, so I don’t suppose it matters whether there’s light. Sometimes they’ll put something in the food to make me sleep. It doesn’t matter much. At least it breaks up the monotony of my days. But it would be nice to be able to see, even if it’s just to know that there’s nothing waiting there, in the dark. I know it’s paranoid to imagine lurking monsters, but I can’t help it.

 

Maybe if they left me some light, it would at least seem warmer. I’m sick of being cold. I don’t know why they haven’t given me a shirt, but it’s not my place to ask. They don’t like it when I talk, so I avoid it.

 

In the dark, I have to move to remind myself I’m still alive. I pull against the chain that holds me to the wall, and it cuts into my wrist. At least that means I still have a body. I can feel the cloth of my pants against my legs, and I reach up to finger my necklace. I wonder if it’s something they’ve allowed me to keep, or if it’s something they gave me. It doesn’t seem any more or less familiar than anything else here. I take it off one morning, just to see what will happen. When one of them, the short one, comes in to feed me, he slaps me, and then puts the necklace back on me. He doesn’t say anything.

 

The cuff around my wrist starts to chafe. I try not to pull, but whenever I fall asleep, I hang on it. When they come in to feed me, two of them this time, I say “Can I get some antibiotic cream or something? I’m going to get an infection.” They look at each other, and they scowl at me. They’ve turned the lights on, though, so I can see some red lines running away from the broken skin around my wrist. Cellulitis, probably. They turn off the light when they leave, and I don’t bother to ask them again about the infection, though I’m fairly certain, after seeing it, that there is a happy family of streptococci colonizing my arm. I wonder how I know that, and conclude that I must be a doctor. I seem a bit young for that, though. Maybe a med student. An intern.

 

When they speak to me at all, they call me “boy” or “hey you” or “Yank.” The last one I don’t mind so much, because it confirms what I guessed, which is that I’m American. I don’t know where in America I’m from. I try to imagine myself on south Florida beaches, on the streets of LA, at a New Year’s gala in Manhattan, in a FEMA trailer park outside New Orleans. None of it seems right. I have to imagine something, though, and so I decide that I was born in Kansas. My family owns a grain elevator. I’m the oldest of five siblings. We have three big dogs, mutts. This is how I occupy my time.

 

The one thing I can’t imagine is my name. I spend many hours going through the alphabet naming every name I can think of. Albert, Andrew, Angus, Allen, Aaron, Axel. None of these seems right, so I go further afield, drawing on what must be memories of literature or history lessons. Alexander, Amos, Ando, Algernon. This takes days. I don’t recognize any name as my own, but there are some I really like the sound of. There’s one I think is important, somehow.

 

_Nathan._

 

This is my favorite name of all the ones I’ve come up with, and so I decide to use it for awhile.

 

This time the woman who comes to feed me is the chatty one. She turns the light on when she comes in. “How are we this morning?” she says.

 

“I’m Nathan,” I say.

 

She drops the tray with my food on it. She stares at me. Then she leaves. Another one, the short one, comes back in a moment. He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me, and shouts, “What do you know?” over and over.

I don’t say anything, just squeeze my eyes shut. No good can come of talking. After a minute, he backs off, regarding me warily. When I don’t move, he leaves, not bothering to clean up the food. He turns off the light when he goes.

 

I decide that Nathan is a dangerous name, and I don’t say it again.

* * *


End file.
